By Derek McNaughton, Postmedia News

Originally published: August 30, 2012

SMALL

MEDIUM

LARGE

Ontario is no place to own an Audi. With speed limits on many highways constrained to a feeble 80 km/h, and on divided highways prohibiting anything more terrifying than 100 km/h, the artistry of the modern Audi is utterly lost in this province.

Of course, it is the same in just about every other jurisdiction in Canada, unlike Germany where the 2013 Audi S5 is assembled and regularly driven at modern speeds, where the car has proven to be serene at cruising altitudes above 150 km/h — speeds that I can assure you are completely comfortable, even natural, for this car.

Substantially revised for 2013, the S5 Coupe has always been a highly regarded GT car, with seating for four but ideally suited for two people who could stuff into the big trunk more suitcases than a Westjet baggage handler sees in a day. Where the S5 really comes alive, however, is on the long, winding road, where its combination of grip, stable handling and prodigious power coupled with tight steering and braking team up to produce a car that will not, under any circumstance, adhere to Ontario’s plebian speed limits. Sorry, but as much as I tried to keep the S5 at the pre-ordained and ungodly speed limits, most of which were set in 1976 and haven’t changed since, the S5 simply refused to obey, sneaking up to 120 km/h in simple cruising mode when I wasn’t looking — especially thwarting my good intentions when overtaking four cars behind a poky Prius driver.

So maybe it was a good thing Audi dropped the 4.2-litre V8 from the 2012 S5 Coupe for the lesser horsepower, supercharged 3.0-litre V6. Problem is, the change didn’t make the car slower, so don’t waste any eloquent laments over the V8’s departure. The blown V6, shared in the S5 Cabriolet and S4, produces 333-horsepower, only 21 less horsepower than the eight pot. It still sounds absolutely terrific under hard acceleration, though not as glorious as the outgoing V8. The punch is also no less severe, either from a standstill or when overtaking said Prius driver because the torque is exactly the same as before — 325 lb.-ft. The torque arrives sooner, too, at 2,900 rpm versus 3,500 for the V8, so it feels more powerful. The smaller engine feels surprisingly silky, too, absent of the coarseness expected from a V6. And it makes the whole car feel less large, more nimble.

That improved agility may not allow the S5 to embarrass a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG or BMW M3 on the track, but the S5 isn’t necessarily meant to be a lord of the ring, boasting a higher degree of civility than the other two, especially over beat-up urban streets. (The coming RS5, however, will be another story.) Equipped with quattro all-wheel drive, the S5 feels more rounded, less focused on all-out performance, intended to provide, it seems, everyday performance under a variety of conditions across all seasons.

Steering is aptly weighted and smooth, with excellent feedback in all situations, despite Audi moving to an electromechanical system that, for some automakers, hasn’t always been as successful. The S5, like the A5, features Audi’s Drive Select, a fancy way of saying you can adjust the throttle response, transmission settings, suspension and quattro sport differential to comfort, auto or dynamic or any combination in between. Indeed, there’s a noticeable difference between the settings, but I felt it easiest to let the car sort out what was needed for the conditions of the drive by leaving it in auto.

While a six-speed manual is still available in the S5 (thankfully), our test car came with Audi’s S tronic 7-speed dual clutch automatic. That pushed the price of our car up to $62,300 (the base S5 starts at $55,900), but the S tronic is as good as Porsche’s PDK transmission and has a sport and manual mode. Downshifts were met with a satisfying blip of the throttle, and could be controlled with paddle shifters behind the very comfortable flat-bottom steering wheel, or through the gear lever, which felt equally fantastic in the hand. Upshifts were sharp and incisive. Left in Sport mode, the car shifted pretty much as desired under demanding drives, but manual mode was best for extracting maximum performance.

The bigger plus of the seven-speed when coupled to this engine is the elimination of punishing highway fuel economy. It wasn’t hard to achieve between 8-9 L/100km on the highway; in the city, however, I stayed closer to the official rating of 13.8. Being able to travel almost 700 km on a full, 61-litre tank of premium fuel was a bonus.

A number of design tweaks on the interior and exterior have sharpened the S5’s already unique allure. LED pipe lighting replaces the jeweled LED look, the headlamps look meaner, the fog lights much neater. The gaping industrial grille has better creases. The taillights, also with LED pipe lighting, look smarter.

The interior is equally massaged, with a revised MMI system that is probably one of the easiest to master after some use. Having many functions controlled by one knob and a few buttons may seem daunting at first, but after a week, everything was easily located. The optional Bang & Olufsen sound system is spectacular. The front seats are some of the best there is, much like the rest of the detailed, beautifully finished interior. The car can be optioned with Google Earth overlays in the navigation system, revealing a multitude of roads and highways — none of which can do the S5 justice.